Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Introduction

It certainly is a blessing to be with you tonight. And I would have you know that I am thoroughly enjoying the week. It’s not Wednesday night yet. The meeting’s not over with. I’m telling you early. But I appreciate so much the hospitality that everyone has been showing me and the encouragement. It is a real blessing to be with Tony and Sherry. We’ve been together some before. But it’s really good to be with them and be with you all here. And we do have several who are visiting with us that Tony has mentioned that are very special, not only to him, but to me as well and to my family. And we’re very glad to have them with us and appreciate so much your interest in spiritual things.

It is a fact of life, whether you are a believer in Christ and a very faithful Christian or an agnostic, somebody who says, well, there may be a God and there may not be a God. I don’t really know, and I’m kind of indifferent about it. Or in your mind, a very zealous atheist, and you’re trying to convince people that there is no God, no matter where you are on that landscape, and I would assume most of us are in one of those categories and lean toward the idea of belief. But no matter where you are, we all have to deal with reality. We all have to deal with the fact of being in the flesh and living on this earth. And we’ve touched on some of those ideas in this gospel meeting.

But in tonight’s lesson, I hope that we can approach it head on in a very direct way. It may make us uncomfortable, but again, regardless of whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, or deem yourself somewhere in between those positions. The fact is that bad things happen to good people. And this happens in a variety of ways. And for us to pretend that’s not the case, for us to suppose that, well, it may happen to somebody else, but it will never happen to me or to someone that I love is a tragedy. And as we mentioned Sunday, it sets us up for failure in our faith. We may think, oh, I believe so much, I’m not even going to think about it. No, we need to think about it.

It may be challenging. It may cause us to ask some hard questions, but good questions. But we need to ask those questions. And I would also say to you that I think in the past, in far too many places, not in every place, but in far too many congregations, even. We were so uncomfortable to talk about some of the things we’re going to talk about tonight that we have not always done a good job of arming our children and our grandchildren with an understanding of why they believe. They knew they were supposed to believe, and we could fill in the blank and say, these are the things that we believe, but why? You say you believe in the Bible, but why do you believe in the Bible?

That is a fair question. You said you believe in God, but why do you believe in God? Now, the atheist or the skeptic comes at the issue tonight very strongly. In fact, he or she likes to throw this up into the face of the Christian. Why is there suffering? And we’re going to approach that subject tonight. There are volumes that have been written, and I’m not so arrogant to think that we’re going to be able to haughty to think that we’re going to be able to cover every possible question someone might have, but at least we’ll touch on some things that I hope will be beneficial to you. For the unbeliever, he really does, I think, try to use the idea of suffering as a mantra of his denial of God.

And on the surface, it seems to sound like a very strong argument. And some Christians, I think, are taken aback by it. Maybe we haven’t thought about it thoroughly or truly as we should have. And so you’re a Christian and you’re talking to someone, or maybe you’re a young student, you’re beginning college, you may not be in a college that offers an environment of faith. And you may have a professor at a major university that’s teaching philosophy class. And his goal may be to try to strip away from you as a young Christian faith. We have a professor, a particular professor, at the University of Central Arkansas there in Conway, where I live. And he has that reputation. And I’ve known other professors that have had that reputation.

And so this idea of suffering and God is something that is given to us as a major argument for unbelief. And again, the idea is if there’s really a God, why is there any suffering? But for the believer, we’re not using it for an excuse for unbelief. We want to believe, but we still need to ask the question. And it’s a worthwhile question to ask. Is the reality of suffering going to offer a challenge to our faith? Why, of course it does. To act as if it does not would not, again, be dealing with the facts. But that’s not to say that unbelief is the answer to the question. I do not believe that it is. In fact, I would actually argue that the biblical presentation of truth offers the most thorough explanation as to why we are in this situation we are as human beings in this world of any thought process someone may have or any position someone may take.

In fact, I believe that the biblical answer is much more satisfying even from a reasonable and logical perspective than atheism could ever dream of being.

People that believe in God and in the Bible and in Christ are made to feel that they’re inferior intellectually. And that they don’t have good answers to challenging questions. And I believe that is false.

The Lord said so.

1. There Are Godly People That Suffer

And let’s think about just that fact that there are godly people that suffer. Now, there is a very prominent idea in our religious world today, or in the religious world today, that attempts to argue that if you serve God, you know, it’s the health and wealth gospel. Things are going to go well for you, and you’re going to be wealthy and rich physically. It’s almost, you know, giving to the work of the Lord is like making an investment. And you’re going to get all that back financially. The Bible does certainly doesn’t teach that. I don’t know what you do with Job. I know at the end of Job’s life, he was blessed more than what he even had before, but that very argument is what Job’s friends were trying to argue.

Job’s friends were saying, You must have done something wrong. If you’re afflicted in this way, you must have done something wrong. He has one friend that says, Well, maybe you haven’t already done something wrong, but you’re gonna, this is preventive maintenance to keep you from sin. And of course, the Lord would say, They have not spoken of me that which is right or rightly. They don’t understand what’s going on. But look in Job chapter 1 and verse 1, we read, There was a man in the land of us whose name was Joab, and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. And very interestingly, we get this behind the scenes circumstance presented to us. Now you have to remember, Job didn’t get this.

Job, I don’t know that Job ever knew completely and entirely what we find out in the book of Job. And I believe the book of Job is more about God than it is Job. But you’ll notice there in verse 6, now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, From where do you come? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? Now, how would you like for God to do that with you? Say, listen. Have you thought about Tony? Would you say, I don’t know if I want the Lord throwing my name around with the devil that way.

Just a thought. But here he says, What about Job? Now you have to remember Satan is that great adversary. And he slanders God to man and man to God. That’s how he, that’s how he works. And when you look at this story, that’s quite apparent. To Job, the temptation would be, if God really loves you, why are you going through this? And to God, he would say to the Lord, Well, the reason Job was faithful is because you blessed him so much. You’ve protected him. You put this hedge around him. He will curse you to your face if you remove those things. Those protective blessings.

And as you come into Job chapter 1 and verses 11 and 12, verse 12, then the Lord said to Satan, Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him. And of course, things start happening around Job. And then when we come to chapter 2 and verse 7, the Lord removes that particular type of restriction and goes on to say to Satan that he could not kill him. And you know the boils and the affliction and the feeling of castigation and being downtrodden. This was a righteous, godly man, and he was suffering, and there were reasons for it, but it was not because Job was ungodly. We studied about Asaph earlier on in this week in Psalm 73.

Think about what Asiph said in the 73rd Psalm. But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, the godly sufferer. That was a challenge for his faith. It caused these folks to have questions in their mind. I want to go back to this idea of the unbelievers’ argument, though. And really try to understand it. What I want to show you is that it is a flawed argument. And too often, when we are in conversations with unbelievers, we grant them ground that feeds a faulty notion in the first place. And it is a critical thing for us to see, especially in a very secularized culture that we live in.

2. The Argument Assumes the Very Thing

This is overly simplistic. Now there’s a couple of things going on. An intelligent, well-informed atheist should know better than an overly simplified argument like I’m going to show you in a minute. So either they don’t know any better or they are intentionally trying to deceive you. And hope you hadn’t figured it out yet. But here’s the argument is summarized by J.L. Mackey. He was an Australian philosopher. Many others have made the same argument. If you do very much reading, there’s a man by the name of Richard Dawkins, who is very sarcastic and caustic toward Christians. And he makes the same kinds of arguments, even though I think J. O. Mackey did a better job with it.

But fundamentally, what he is saying is if God is perfectly good, and if God is perfectly powerful. So you’re dealing with the goodness and the holiness and the omnipotence of God, which we as Christians say that we believe in and profess to have faith in. And yet we have the reality of evil that those things don’t match up. And this is what you hear from the vast majority of unbelievers and atheists and skeptics that I’ve ever talked to. This is one of the first things you hear. And part of the reason it can be challenging is because there are two aspects of the argument. There’s an intellectual issue and there’s an emotional issue, and any of us could get caught up in the emotions of it.

Because we’re in the flesh and we’re right here and now. We’re not in God’s position of being outside of time. But we’re going to deal with the intellectual part tonight. So the argument is you believe in an omnipotent, all powerful, all loving, good God, and yet here is evil and suffering in the world. How do you reconcile those things? Either you have a powerless God or you have an evil God. Which one is it? Either or, A or B. Pick one.

And so what we’re tempted to do is try to go and say, okay, I’m going to try to answer this without thinking about what’s been done. The argument assumes the very thing. Now follow me. This argument assumes the very thing by the unbeliever, it assumes the very thing that ends up proving the existence of God. Let me ask this question. If you’re an atheist and you’re saying you cannot reconcile in your mind, or an agnostic or whatever, you can’t reconcile in your mind how you can have a good God and have evil in the world. What word in that sentence that I just spoke sticks out? The word evil. If you’re an atheist, where do you get the concept of evil? Now, this whole thing is rooted in the idea, how can you have a good God and a powerful God and there be not just injustice, and we’ll work on that word in a minute.

But evil.

Now, I know atheists use the word evil, but they don’t mean what you and I mean.

And so, as a even a young Christian, when your professor gives you this scenario, the first thing I’m asking him is why did you use the word evil? How can you talk about evil and immorality and that kind of thing? I want to share with you some segments from C.S. Lewis. But before we get to C.S. Lewis, let’s read together. This is a book entitled The Closing of the American Mind. It was written by Alan Bloom back in the early 90s. He had been an educator, and he’s talking about the circumstance that he found in the classroom. And I want you to read with me some of the things he says. He says, the relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight, but a moral postulate.

Now just stay with it. We’ll get where we’re going here in just a minute. I know y’all are going, oh no, this reminds me of school. But just hang on. He’s describing the framework of thinking of a lot of people in our culture today. And so he says, the relativity of truth, there’s no absolute truth, is not a theoretical insight, but a moral postulate. They’ve been told this is morally good to say that truth is not absolute. He says, the condition of a free society, or so the students see it. They have all been equipped with the framework early on, and it is the modern replacement of the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society. This is where we’re having some of the discussions in our society on morality that we’re having right now.

He goes on and says that it is a moral issue for students is revealed by the character of their response when challenged. In other words, when somebody says, wait a minute, truth is absolute, it’s objective, it doesn’t work that way. He says, when you say that to them, when they’re challenged, a combination of disbelief and indignation is coming from them. And so what Alan Bloom says fundamentally is for you to talk about absolute truth, here’s this young person, and they have been filled with the idea that truth is not absolute. Truth is not objective. Truth is what I want it to be. Truth is what I want to believe. What I want to do. He says, to ask the question, are you an absolutist? The only alternative they know uttered in the same tone is, are you a monarchist, or do you really believe in witches?

So what he’s saying is to believe in witchcraft is the same as saying truth is absolute. That’s the point where we’ve gotten in our society because of some of this argumentation. I want you to go back with me and let’s think about some statements that C.S. Lewis made. There are things C. S. Lewis has taught in some of his writings that we wouldn’t agree with, but C. S. Lewis was a brilliant man. He reasoned himself out of unbelief into at least belief as a theist in God and in Christianity as it would be defined by the world. But he’s dealing with this idea of justice, and he says, you know, when I was an unbeliever, I would argue against Christians and those who believed in Christ and believed in God in the very way I just described to you.

If there’s a good God and a merciful God, an all powerful God, how can there be suffering in the world? I want you to listen to his process. This is interesting. He says, and of course, talking about justice. The atheist says, why is there so if there’s a God reigning, why is there so much injustice in the world? See us Lewis says, and of course that raises a very big question. If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong? He says, for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to the question because I kept on feeling whatever you say, and however clever your arguments are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power?

That’s kind of what people are saying.

But as he goes on, he says, that he was saying, aren’t all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious? But then that threw me back into another difficulty. So he says, when I was an unbeliever, and I was making these arguments, they sounded good on the surface, but there was something about the argument that was wrong and flawed. He says, My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But then he goes on to say, but how had I got this idea of just and unjust? How do you get injustice? You don’t have a God. You have no God. He says, How had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? He says, if the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? Whether you’re an atheist or an agnostic or a Christian, you’re looking at the world and there’s certain things, even if you’re trying to deny God, there’s certain things most people, unless they’re so hardened in unbelief they refuse, have compassion about. Why do we have that compassion? Why do we see injustice, as he would say? Of course, he says, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own, but if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too.

For the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. He goes on to say, thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist, in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless, I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality, namely my idea of justice, was full of sins. Now, this is what I want you to hear. So if you tuned out, okay, come back. This is the place to pick up. I want you to get what he said. But you see the development. Do you guys understand? Just nod at me whether you mean it or not. Yeah, we got it. Okay. But do you see how it seemed like a good argument, but really it wasn’t?

Really, it was defeating his unbelief. And once he started thinking about justice and morality, where does this come from? But this is what he says. He says, consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. How do we figure all this out? You know, and I love. I love the relativist. I mean, if it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny. There are no absolutes. Let me say that again. Did you get the problem with that? There are no absolutes. Except there’s an absolute that says there’s no absolutes. I mean, it’s just silly. It’s foolish. It’s inherently flawed. But then this is when the condescension toward believers comes, and we’re supposed to think that we’re not intelligent and quick and fast enough.

See. So, with that as the background, does skepticism really offer the answers as to why we live in the world we live in?

You press an atheist. They don’t really know. Now they mock the Christian, but they don’t have the answer. And they become very frustrated when you say, just keep asking those questions. Where did that come from? Where did that come from? Where did that come from? Why? And let me throw this at you. Because I think this is important. There’s a trick. I had a young lady in a who’s a philosopher. It’s an entrapping question. You’ve got to think for a minute. Which we don’t like to do a lot. But her philosophy professor said, who created morality?

Now, if we’re too quick to the trigger, we go, oh, God did. Really? Was there a time when there was no morality? Do you see how sometimes we don’t think through these things? Listen, God is morality is. Morality itself is rooted in God’s nature. Thus, moral values, and this, listen, brethren, these are the conversations we’re going to be having. Moral values transcend any particular culture. The atheist says, Well, this culture has their moral values, and that culture. We may not subscribe to God ordained moral values. We may not lead lives. We may not believe in those moral values. But morality itself is rooted in the nature of God. So the answer is God is morality. And you’ll hear atheists talk about a social contract. And what they mean by that is a society decides what they think is best for themselves.

Do you know how many degraded and depraved practices have happened in cultures and societies that said we think this is a good idea? Was it moral because they said it was moral? Or does morality transcend that? Now, once you get to the place where you understand moral values are outside of any particular culture, there’s only one thing to attribute that to, and that is God.

That’s why when people want to rebel against God, they obviously want to deny his existence or live in guilt for the rest of their life, or else repent.

3. Some Issues We Are Never Going to Fully Understand

When we deal with suffering with these things in our minds, somebody may say, Well, Bruce, you know, I think that there are just some issues that we are never going to fully understand, and I agree with you. You’re right about that. And there’s an aspect of suffering and God’s providential interactions that I don’t ever think I will fully understand, but I still trust the Lord. And you see that in Job, for instance, you go back to Job, turn to Job chapter 38. You remember at the end of Job. And in Job the 38th chapter, this is where the greatness of God is spoken of, and this is what man looks like when he points his finger in the face of the Almighty God. Job 38, verse 1.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? In verse 4, he says, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who said it’s measurement since you know, or who stretched the line on it? On what words based itself? And he goes through all these, you know, rhetorical questions. Where were you when I spoke the world into existence? And you and you want to question and challenge me in an unbelieving way. And so I think there is a sense in which we understand that there’s a place for us as Christians to say, and you can read all the way through chapter 42 of Job. There’s a place where we say, you know what, I don’t understand everything, and I’m finite infallible, and I trust my God in his revelation.

And that’s a fair thing to say. And it’s a good thing to say, but we, while that’s good to say, there’s an aspect of this that we need to talk about and think about.

4. Free Will and a Loving Relationship

I want to go back to this proposition, you might call it. Here it is. I want to show you what was wrong with it. The idea is, well, God’s goodness and Jehovah’s suffering are just two things that cannot coexist, and therefore God must not exist because we know suffering exists, right? Well, the argument is rooted in the idea that God did not have a moral justification for creating a good world, because that’s the biblical answer, that had the potential of having become an evil world. Did everybody get that? The idea is that God was not morally justified in creating a world, albeit good when he created it, that had the potential of becoming evil. Because that’s how suffering came to be according to the Bible. So let’s think through that.

I would say to you, that’s flawed, that’s wrong, that’s illogical. If we can show that God in eternity, while he certainly doesn’t never wanted or did not desire, I don’t think, man to sin and of that sort and things to be the way they are. Yet he had a plan to redeem and restore us in soul and body in redemption in eternity. If God had a morally justifiable reason for creating a good world that where man being good that had the potential to go a good direction or a bad direction, thus suffering comes into the world. If he had a morally justifiable cause for that, then this whole thing that human suffering and God cannot coexist is wrong. I mean the whole stack of cards fault.

So let’s think along that line, because the Bible has some things to say about that. Why did God give us the thing that could lead to sin? What is it that God created us having? I believe in his own image, that could either lead to good or even potentially, even though the thing he gave us was good, it could potentially lead us to have the capacity to do evil. Free will. So the other alternative is he doesn’t create us with free will. The problem with that is what is God’s objective in creating man? What did he want? Have you asked yourself that? What did he want? He wanted a loving relationship with us. He wanted a loving relationship with us. How can you have, brethren, a loving relationship if you don’t have free will?

If you don’t have free will, you can’t have a loving relationship.

But if he gives us free will, the logical necessity is man had the potential of doing the wrong thing. But God, in his eternal purpose, planned that even if men did the wrong thing, brought sin into the world, sin infects the world. We live in a fallen world. We have suffering and sickness and pain and sorrow and difficulty, that through Christ, he would still redeem us as his own special people. So the argument that there’s no scenario where God could create a good world that had the potential of becoming evil or having suffering in it, and God still exists is not true. Let me ask you this way. Those of you who have kids. No smart eloquent remarks, by the way.

When you started your family, why did you want to have children? Let me give you some options. Again, don’t speak out loud on this one.

You wanted somebody to clean the house. How’s that working out for you? Probably not too good. Take out the trash back and accept it. No, that’s not what you did. You wanted to have these little guys around so you could boss them around. Again, I would ask you how that’s working out for you. No. What it was is you. We wanted to share our love. And we wanted our children and our family to bring glory to God. Right? That’s the wrong answer, by the way, just so you don’t know. Pick that one. My point to you is, when God created man, that was his desire. But to have that to be accomplished, he has to run a risk of us having the potential to do the wrong thing.

Which would be hurtful to him. But the only way to have loving communion, to have a loving relationship, is that had to be the case. And that’s why we have God’s goodness and human suffering. So in order for love to exist, free will had to be a reality. We could choose good, we could choose evil. Genesis says when he created things, he created them very good. They were very good. However, when man sinned, physical suffering, death, the things we deal with. And even then, God planned to redeem us to Himself. I had somebody ask me a very good question a while back. Lady that worships with us. She said, Do you think that God knew that the majority of people would reject him? And Jesus says that in Matthew 7, 13 and 14.

I personally think he knew. You say, Well, why did he create? Well, each one of us makes our own choice. However, think about how much God loves you. God loves you so much. God loves each one of us. God so treasures those who will be his people that he was willing to go through the pain of the rejection of those who would choose to do so in order to have his people.

In order to have that relationship. C.S. Lewis in talking about divine love and free will said, of course, God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way. Apparently, he thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with him, but there is a difficulty in disagreeing with God. He says, He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes. You could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. He says, when you are arguing against him, you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. It is like cutting off the branch that you’re sitting on. If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will, then we may take it is worth paying.

That’s good stuff. By the way, while we’re here, and this is for free. When you hear unbelievers come at you and they say, Well, it’s so illogical and irrational and unreasonable to be a Christian. Where does the atheist, not only where does he get morality, where does he get logic? Logic is a, there’s a standard of reasoning outside of me. So when somebody says something that doesn’t harmonize with logic, what do we say? Well, that’s illogical. Where did that come from? If there’s no God, is it just random? Is it just accidental? I think that’s the point C. S. Lewis is making. You’re arguing against the one who gave you the ability to make you do reasonable argument in the first place. And if there is a state of war and conflict for God to get that free will, loving, communion relationship with him in eternity, then surely it was worth it to him.

5. A Misunderstanding of God's Attributes

Part of our problem, and now I’m talking to those of us who are Christians, is we have a misunderstanding of God’s attributes. Not all of us, I’m sure all of us here are the exception to the rule. But sometimes the way we define God’s attributes gives an advantage or opportunity to an unbeliever and to converting the unbeliever that we should not give him. Just like granting that statement we had at the beginning of sermon. And not thinking through. Where does justice come from? Where does, you know, evil come from? And the two attributes I especially want you to think about is the power of God and the goodness of God. And that’s where all that silly stuff that atheists all want to ask is Well, do you think God created a rock so big that you know he couldn’t lift it and all that foolishness?

But let’s talk for a minute. Omnipotence, which is the idea that God is all powerful. Does that mean that God, and how many times have I heard it defined this way? If I said define omnipotence, a lot of people will say that means God can do anything. He can do anything. No.

Omnipotence, as it’s presented in Scripture, is that God has the power to do whatever is in harmony with his will and nature.

There are things, does the Bible ever say there are things God cannot do? Sure. Well, it’s not a power issue so much as it is a holiness and righteousness issue. God cannot lie because that would violate the nature that he has and his holiness and his righteousness. So don’t expect that he’s going to express his power in a way that is not sensible for him as the creator of the universe within his own nature. But I want to go further because the one I think that sometimes it really plays a role in what we’re talking about tonight is God’s goodness. We don’t usually say this out loud, but some of us define God’s goodness. As God doing for me whatever I want him to do. And so when we talk about a good God, somebody goes, Oh, you know, you hear this, and it’s good to say this, I guess, but people say, God is so good.

When things are going the way we want them to go. And when things, now rarely this happens, and I think it is the expression of faith that we ought to have, when bad things are happening, I still, as a Christian, should be able to say, God is good. Now that’s the challenge for us as human beings. But our idea that God’s goodness is grounded in giving me what every whim that I may desire, that’s not the goodness of God. That’s not in harmony with God’s wisdom, perhaps, or his holiness, and he may understand a lot more about what I need than what I think that I need, as I’m asking him for particular things. There may be times where I need discipline. Or where I need God to say no to me.

And it’s by good favor if he says no to me.

When the unbeliever says you can’t have the goodness of God and human suffering, see, right there we’re off the page. Because he’s short-sighted. What concerns me, I understand what the atheist is that way, but some of us as believers need to spend a little bit more time thinking through this and understanding that the goodness of God is not just him giving what I think I want in a particular moment. The goodness of God transcends my particular desires, and I trust in that goodness and him offering me eternally and everlastingly what will be in my best interest. And God, while he does provide for our physical needs, is much more interested in our eternity with him than everything just fitting our agenda and plan here. And the problem is some of us are more concerned about our agenda here than we are God’s purpose in going there.

And until we get that fixed, we’re going to be feeding the argument of the unbeliever. Kingdom living is radically different than the life of the unbeliever. And perhaps some of us are too comfortable living the life of the unbeliever while we claim to be believers.

I’ll quote C.S. Lewis one more time. He says, we want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as the grandfather in heaven. I’ve seen our benevolence whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be said at the end of each day a good time was had by all. He said, I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don’t, and since I have reason to believe nevertheless that God is love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction. It’s not that God’s goodness and human suffering, especially with God’s eternal plan and purpose, cannot be harmonized, understanding that He created man with free will, understanding that man’s sin, understanding the consequences of sin, understanding that we live in a fallen the world, but God has promised redemption.

6. Suffering Can Still Serve His Purpose

It’s not that can’t be worked out in our minds. Logically and reasonably, according to the scriptures. But in the process of doing this, we may need to have a deeper understanding of God’s goodness and what it means to say God is good. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. And there’s several other things we could mention, but that will do for now. So there’s a place to talk about the wise biblically. There’s a place to say there’s some things I don’t know, but I’ll leave that to the Lord. But here’s some good points to be made to an unbeliever, I think. But when you’re dealing with suffering, what are some things you need to keep in mind? And this may be more important than figuring out why, because you’re not always going to have the complete answer to why, but at least have some ideas as to what the Bible says about the subject.

But I want us to look at 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Do you remember Paul says that he knew a man, whether in the body or out of the body, he didn’t know. I believe that’s talking about Paul who was caught up in the third heaven. And he had these revelations.

But in verse 7, he says, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. In a way, this deals with why, but these are things we need to understand about suffering as we live in this world. Looking toward eternity. Why might God not just immediately take away suffering? It can still serve his purpose. One of the ways in which it helps serve God’s purpose is in the sense of my perspective. Paul says even he needed to have the right perspective. And after he might be exalted through these revelations, God is going to allow Satan, who’s the agent here of causing them to have a thorn in the flesh.

And so he says he did this to keep me from exalting myself. Let me tell you something. When you’re suffering, humility comes. When you’re hurting, dependence on God is demanded of you. But there’s this rather ironic thing in the life of the faithful Christian is when you’re suffering. It seems like you become oftentimes in your mind closer to God than you’ve ever been. And so Paul says, this was good for me to keep me from exalting myself. Now I don’t know what the thorn in the flesh was, but knowing Paul, he felt it was something that would hinder him in some way in his ministry and his service to his brethren and to the Lord. And he’s going to pray for this to be removed, and the answer is going to be no.

So perspective. But then look at the process. There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan. Let’s be clear about this. He uses the term buffet. The term buffet means to strike with the fist. To strike with the fist. Metaphorically, it’s variously translated as to pound away, to abuse, to torment. The thorn becomes a fist. To such a point, notice the petition. Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. Who are some other folks you could think of praying three times? Daniel did, morning, noon, and evening, and the Lord didn’t get sent me. So he’s pouring his heart out, and he’s praying to God about this, and he’s offering this petition. He says, I prayed that it might lead me.

But then what does the Lord say? The Lord said, No, it’s not going to leave you. I’m not going to remove the thorn. I’m going to give you the grace to deal with the thorn. Yeah, we want the thorn to go away. We want the hurting to go away. We want the pain to go away. We want the suffering to go away. He says, No. I’m going to give you the grace to be victorious over the suffering because this is doing something that needs to happen for you. And so he says in verses 9 and 10, My grace is sufficient for you. For power is perfected in weakness. What is God doing? God is chiseling out through suffering, the character of his son Jesus Christ in us.

And we need to recognize that when we pray for glory, before you get to the glory, the suffering comes first. Peter would describe it in 1 Peter 1 as an element going through this intense and heated fire and the undesirable elements being eliminated. And when it comes out on the other side, it’s more precious than it ever would have been. The undesirable elements have been melted away. And trials do that to us. As the tears come down our face, as our heart is broken, as our spirit is contrite, as we’re journeying in faith. Trials do that for us. And God indeed is blessing us when such takes place. Suffering can be for our eternal good if we will let God use it in our life. It’s not a reason to be an unbeliever.

It’s a means of reaching glory. And it can come emotionally or psychologically or physically. But we can be victorious. We have a couple that worship with us. Tony knows them. A man by the name of Rue Garrett. Rue and Sandy. And Rue, about I guess it’s been about three years ago now. When he was he was first diagnosed with cancer and he fought it. Rue called me regularly. Rue would call me regularly.

I’m stepping all the way down. Good. Rue would call me, and I would want to talk to Rue to encourage Rue. Especially when we realized from a physical standpoint, while he was, I think, winning the battle spiritually, he was losing it physically. But he never wanted to talk about himself. He didn’t want to talk about the Bible and questions he had about the Bible.

And I saw Rue and he dealt, it seemed like as it progressed, his faith got stronger and stronger. And he was like any father and husband would be. He was concerned about his children. But trusted the Lord. And I would see Rue when I was preaching on Sandy’s arm. Now you have to understand Rue, before he came back to the Lord had been a bull rider. Strong guy. But now he has gotten weaker and weaker. We come back and we had a chair, like God, those chairs back there. We would have a chair, a more comfortable chair. And he would sit in that chair and hear the gospel. And shame the rest of us.

And I’ve said to people before, he prayed and he listened and he worshiped. But let me tell you something. The reason Rue, when he was suffering, did that. This was not a confession because I hadn’t been faithful to the Lord. Right at the end, that’s not Rue. He prayed when he was dying. Because that’s what he did when he was healthy. He prayed and he worshiped, and it was part of who he was. Don’t get to the place in life in which it just feels uncomfortable because it’s not who you’ve been. You worship God, you pray, you prepare for the trials before they get there. And then when they come, it’s natural to pray. It’s natural to sing. It’s the right thing for you to do.

Conclusion

And the suffering is an opportunity now for you to share Christ and glorify God and look toward eternity, which we say we’re doing. So when we back up from this issue and you think about suffering, there I think are some very reasonable things to consider as a Christian as to why we believe in God, even though we live in a suffering world.

But prepare as a Christian to glorify God in yourself. You’ve listened very well tonight. If you’re not a Christian, but you understand that Jesus is the Son of God, why not arm yourself now, equip yourself to bring honor to the Lord and to serve him and to be ready for eternity? Why not come and repent of your sins and be immersed in water for the remission of your sins upon your confession of faith? And if you are a Christian and you’ve allowed this sin sick world to lead you away from Christ, don’t wait till it’s too late. Come now together with Sam and we say.